


Crucible

by someinstant



Series: Foundry [3]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Battle of Winterfell, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Episode Related, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Post-Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Build, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 20:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18676759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: It is good to watch the sunrise with a friend.





	Crucible

**Author's Note:**

> This deals with the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Winterfell, and therefore describes the consequences of violent death and injuries in frank terms.

Gendry doesn’t think during the battle, doesn’t have any notion of making a decision beyond the refusal to let his arms stop swinging.  In the songs, soldiers die bravely, shouting words of defiance or whispering their lady-love’s name; at Winterfell, men shit themselves and cry, wordless, sinking beneath corpses.  

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

He knows he was on the battlement, remembers the tight corners of the stairwell and choking on the sweet stink of the grave, remembers stepping on the chest of a Wildling boy not quite dead in the courtyard, feeling the breastbone break beneath his boot.  His arms, he thinks, must have ached, burning with each blow of the dragonglass mace. The shallow slice along his back from a wight’s sword, the flesh gone from his thigh-- it’s likely they hurt. He thinks he must have been afraid.

He can’t remember, not really. It’s a small mercy.

It takes longer than it should for him to understand the fight is done.  The wights fall all of a piece, the bone-and-rag clatter of their bodies a dull echo across the castle.  Around him he hears men cry out in surprise, in fear. Gratitude. Gendry doesn’t stop. He swings his mace down again and again into the dead, into the bodies of men dead for months and weeks and scant, slender moments.  They don’t fight back.

No one stops him.  He finds himself at last, arms shaking, unable to lift his mace, at the foot of the keep.  He gasps for breath. There is a weak light beyond the ruin of the castle wall, and it is more beautiful than any sight he has ever seen.

Gendry lets the mace fall from his hands.  He doubles over, empties his stomach, and lowers himself along a bare stretch of wall on shaking legs.  The body nearest him is slicked in red, not black ichor, and he is comforted by this. It is good to watch the sunrise with a friend.

* * *

Time happens around him for a bit.  A man is wailing like an infant, his _no no no no please no please_ repeating like the chorus of a drinking song.  Gendry worries for a moment the hiccuping sobs are his own, but bringing a hand to his mouth only makes it come away bloody and foul. Fouler.  He doesn’t think he is crying. It’s hard to tell.

His hands are bleeding, he notes. The fingers curl like claws after their endless grip, the palms skinned, blistered, raw and bruised. It hurts to try and straighten his hands.  He wonders if something important inside has burst.

“Fucking _help_ me,” he hears a hoarse voice growl at him, and looks up.  It’s a woman, a Wildling, and she’s pulling desperately at the torso of a man half-buried in a pile of bodies.  The man isn’t dead.

The man isn’t dead, and Gendry thinks that might be the point: to not be dead.  He pushes himself upright, his right leg nearly folding under him with the weight.  Staggers forward, and grunts as he helps the woman heave the man out from under the corpses.  The man breathes wetly, and there is blood at his ear and mouth. He has a look of the South about him.  “Where--?” Gendry asks, voice strange inside his head, too low and broken to be his own. “Where do we take him?”

“I don’t know,” the woman says.  She sounds like sorrow, a deep cut on her chin painting her neck with rust.  “This is your home, not mine.”

* * *

There is movement at the Great Hall, so they drag the man slowly over the broken stones and bodies in that direction.  Gendry hooks his forearms beneath the man’s shoulders and tries to let the man’s bloody head loll against his chest, gentle as he can manage.  The woman takes his feet. They stop every few steps; there is something wrong with her shoulder, and his arms are shaking so badly he fears he’ll drop the man to the cobbles.

“Do you know him?” he asks.

She shakes her head.  “Saw he was breathing,” she says.  “The Night King don’t get a single one more from me.”

Gendry nods, and takes more weight.

* * *

The Great Hall reeks of blood, hot and living.  Some of the less damaged limp between their dying fellows and shout for water, for linen, for needles and thread, for pressure to stop the bleeding.  He and the woman lay their charge down on the flagstones, lining him up carefully next to a boy with a gut wound. It stinks, and Gendry catches the boy’s tired eyes.   _He knows_ , Gendry thinks, and wonders if any of his people are living.  Someone should see him off.

“He’ll be alright now,” the woman says of the Southern soldier.  Gendry isn’t sure, but doesn’t object: the man will either live, or he’ll die.  At least it won’t be in a pile of rotting corpses.

The woman’s eyes narrow, and she jerks her chin at the gash in his thigh.  “That’ll do you in if you don’t burn it shut,” she says, and she might be right.  The blood has wet down his leg into his boot, and now that he isn’t fighting-- now that he can think again-- he realizes how badly it hurts, how everything feels hot and grey and distant.

“Yeah,” he says, and feels himself sway a little.  “I think--,” he starts, and then there are two hands, strong and bruising on his upper arms, and Davos’ voice says, “Fucking hells, son,” and Gendry doesn’t weep, he doesn’t, but he shakes, and shakes, and can’t seem to stop.

* * *

He doesn’t push at his memory for details of the battle, just shakes his head when the old man asks how he made it through.  “Not important,” Davos says, gruff. “Don’t worry about it right now.” And that seems like good advice. Seems best to just be grateful it’s over, preparing to bite down on the leather sleeve of his jerkin as Davos puts a poker in the fire.  

“I think we’ll have to cut them off,” Davos says, and Gendry feels himself go pale until Davos sees his horror, saying, “No, not-- gods, your trousers, man.  Your trousers-- they’re stuck to the wound. I can burn you,” he says, “but I’m sure as fuck not the one to cut off anything important.”

“Knew I liked you,” Gendry says as Davos takes a knife to the blood-soaked woolens, ripping them back from the ugly notch of raw flesh.  Something about this is funny, he thinks, and starts to laugh.

“You sure your head’s alright?” Davos asks, taking the poker from the flames.  It glows a cool red; he’s had worse burns in the smithy.

Gendry nods.  Shakes his head.  “Sorry,” he says, “go ahead, it’s nothing,” and takes the leather between his teeth.   _Bloody pants_ , he thinks with a last chuckle, right before Davos presses the poker to the pulsing wound, and then-- _Arya_.

* * *

She’d bit her lip to keep silent above him, hips restless, circling for an angle that would work, her fingers digging into his chest and shoulders as he slid a hand between them to help her along.  She’d stilled when she found it, every muscle tensing in frustration. He’d thought of the half-second pause between the draw and release of her bowstring-- and then she had shuddered, and gasped, and let out something quiet that might have been his name.

That, he remembers.

* * *

After, Davos wraps his leg with a length of linen given to him by a girl-- one of the scullery maids, Gendry thinks, one who gave him some tallow for his hands, just a few days ago-- and hands him a skin of wine.  It isn’t good, but it’s wet, and he drinks greedily.

He can’t think how to ask about her.  He hasn’t any right, he knows. So he asks, “Who--?,” and hopes Davos won’t tell him anything he can’t bear to hear.

Davos grimaces. Says, “It might have been worse. Jon Snow lives, and the Dragon Queen. I’ve yet to see Lord Tyrion, but I heard he survived, although the crypt rose.”  

“Fuck,” says Gendry, horrified beyond measure.  _It’s going to be safer down in the crypts, you know_ , he’d told her. Like an idiot.  “Of course they did, we’re fucking fools. The children--?” he asks, thinking of the parade of frightened faces heading underground, the dim, close tunnels, the unnatural lurch of bodies long decayed.  He feels sick beyond the blood loss and bad wine.

“I don’t know how many,” Davos says. Swallows thickly.  “I saw Lady Stark overseeing the removal of-- several.”

Lady Stark.  “And her sister?” Gendry asks, and feels his abused hands burn with their sudden clench. He isn’t subtle; he doesn’t fucking care.

“Her sister?” Davos repeats, brows gathering, and Gendry wants to shake him: _Yes, her sister_ , he thinks, _the angry one, the one that kissed me and lay with me and told me to live through the night_.  

“Arya,” Gendry says, and then, impatiently, “The Lady Arya. Does she live?”

Davos says, “She does,” and Gendry exhales.  Lets his head fall back against the cold stone behind him, closing his eyes tightly against the hot burn that fills them.  He wishes he knew which god to thank.

“I saw her, on the wall,” Davos says, slow.  “She fought like fury. Had a rather impressive stave.  Where a highborn girl might get a thing like that, I can’t imagine.” Gendry feels a smile ghost across his face.  He doesn’t try to fight it off. When he opens his eyes, Davos meets them, exasperated. “Seven hells, boy,” he says.  “And I thought I was a slow learner.”

* * *

The Great Hall steadily fills with the injured, row upon row, the desperate hush of the makeshift infirmary broken by gasps and cries as those who are able set bones, stitch skin, remove crushed limbs.  

“Help me up,” Gendry says at length, and reaches a hand out to Davos.  They’ve been sitting silently, passing the wineskin between them.

Davos looks at him like he’s proclaimed himself king of the grumkins.  “You’re not fit,” he argues. “You need rest.”

“Aye,” Gendry agrees.  Every inch of his body aches, and there's a muscle between between his shoulder blades that keeps twitching and won't stop.  “Rest and a piss, and I’ll get neither here. And I’m taking up space that’s needed, in any case.”  He extends his hand again, and says, “Truly, I just want to go and find a place to sleep.”

Davos hesitates, and then nods and stands.  "Up you get, then," he says.  Pulls Gendry to his feet, gripping his forearms. The burn on his leg pulls and throbs, but Gendry breathes through it, slow.  He’s had worse.

“Thank you,” he says as he moves to leave. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Likewise,” says Davos.

* * *

Crossing the courtyard, it seems at once enormous and too closed in to stand. He shuffles through what feel like canyons between the hillocks of bodies, aiming for the smithy.  He wishes he could make his legs move faster; he doesn't want to linger.  Doesn't want to look the dead in the face.  Gendry is not the only figure moving slowly, eyes set at some unseen point; the living all trudge and stumble, clumsy with exhaustion and grief. Mercifully, the dead continue to lie still.  

There are a half dozen bodies on the floor of the smithy.  Gendry doesn't recognize them, but he likely had a hand in making their weapons.  They must have decided that a place with weapons and fire would be a fine place to retreat, and he is sorry it wasn’t. He steps over a knight in plate armor to a quenching bucket, still half full.  There’s some ash in the water, but he hooks the handle on his forearm anyway, suddenly desperate to scrub off the gore.  He drags himself to the storeroom, trying not to spill the bucket as he goes.

He half expects to see her, lax and pleased and bare, laying on the sacks where they had made their bed.  She isn’t, of course. He knows better than to be disappointed.

He lowers himself to the sacks gingerly, more gentle than her shove had been.  He contemplates his boots; he wants them off, but isn’t certain his swollen hands can manage the laces.  Gendry sighs, and tackles the looser ties of his jerkin instead.

There’s a shaking breath in the half-dark of the corner, and his muscles knot, the twitching in his back tightening to a thread of fire, and he reaches for the mace he abandoned hours ago as he scrambles to his feet.  She steps forward--  _Arya--_  and he is suddenly more frightened and more full of joy than he can remember being in his life.  

She’s bloodied, and graceless in her movement in a way he hasn’t seen since she was Arry.  There’s a livid mark at her throat. A hand, wrapped around that slim column. He reaches for her, and she doesn’t flinch-- but there is something in her stillness that says she wants to.

He drops his hand. “Are you well?” he asks.  A stupid question; none of them are well.

She makes a sound that might be a laugh.  It’s horrible.

“I was going to try and clean up a little,” he says, unsure what to do.  Gestures to the bucket. “Maybe try and sleep.”

Arya closes her eyes for a moment, tight, and her voice is broken, harsh and strange as she says, “I don’t think I can sleep,” and he understands. She looks at the bucket consideringly, and steps towards him. There’s a sticky red trail down the side of her white face, an ugly split of skin above her right eye.  She sees him looking and touches her head as if she'd forgotten the hurt.

Arya sits, perching on the rough canvass like she doesn't trust it. Gendry lowers himself next to her. Not too near, though: she reminds him of an injured fox they saw in the Riverlands, once.  It tried to bite him.

“I hit my head,” she tells him, though he can see that just fine.  Her eyes are wide and dark, and only half-focused. “It’s too loud out there.”

“I can be quiet,” he says, and dips a bit of sacking into the water.  Hands it to her.

She shakes her head, then winces.  “You do it,” she says, imperious, and Gendry smiles.

“As my lady commands,” he says, and laughs, low, as she strikes gently at his chest, just above his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I don't know how Gendry survived. I don't know how anyone survived.  
> 2\. I swear to god, everyone in that damn battle is going to need so much therapy.  
> 3\. I need so much therapy for having watched that damn battle.  
> 4\. I am sincerely concerned about Westerosi concussion protocol for Arya.


End file.
